Ted’s newspaper had dropped to the floor and he was on his feet. “I’ll take Miss Mowbray,” he said aggressively, striding to the divan. “If I may?”
She was sitting up. She protested feebly, “It isn’t necessary.…”
“And me?” Hebe Heath inquired tragically. Disheveled and forlorn, she was more ravishing than ever. “Oh, Ted!”
“If you’ll allow me the pleasure, Miss Heath.” Adolph Koch was bowing to her with admirable social grace, under the circumstances.
“You, Miss Tusar?” Damon asked.
“I’ll take her,” Diego Zorilla offered gruffly, with no social grace whatever.
“No, you won’t,” Garda declared. Blear though her eyes were, they still could flash. “I’ll take a taxi.…”
Diego shrugged and turned to Fox. “Are you going? For God’s sake, let’s get out of here.” He headed for the arch.
Fox followed him. In the reception hall a manservant got their things for them while a plain-clothes man looked on. They had to wait a moment for word from Damon to pass them. The elevator man abandoned all decorum and discipline and stared at them all the way down. The night lobby staff also stared, as did the members of a little group under the canopy on the sidewalk: the doorman, two policemen, and two or three young fellows, one of whom pounced on Fox.
“Listen, Mr. Fox, I’ve been waiting for you, this is a natural for two columns with a by-line …”
It took a block of brisk walking and brisk words to shake him off.
“My gloves are in my right pocket,” Diego grumbled. “I always put them in the left.”
“Sure,” Fox nodded, “they went through everything. My car’s around the corner in Sixty-ninth. Can I give you a lift?”
“I want a drink.”
“You’ve had nothing to do but drink for the past seven hours.”
“I couldn’t, not there. I swallowed a little Scotch and damn near threw it up. My stomach isn’t settled yet. How about coming down to my place for a sandwich?”
“I can tell you what you want to know in one sentence. The police have no more idea who killed Dunham than you have.”
But Diego protested that he wanted more than that, he wanted the company of his friend with a sandwich and a drink, and though Fox objected that he had sixty miles to drive and needed eight hours sleep and intended to prune grape vines in the morning, he consented. They drove in his car, stopping at an all-night delicatessen on the way to get sandwiches, to Diego’s address on 54th Street, an old brownstone house, and mounted two flights of stairs to his apartment. Even with its polygenetic and rather shabby furnishings, the medium-sized living room was comfortable and not unattractive, and Diego did the honors with a Spanish flourish, taking Fox’s hat and coat and disposing of them in the closet.
“I’ll serve the feast,” he proposed. “Soda with yours?”
“I don’t suppose I could have coffee?”
“Sure. I make mine for breakfast. Ten minutes.”
“That’ll be marvelous. You’d make some woman a good wife. I want to wash my hands.”
“That door over there.”
Fox went to the bathroom. Behind the closed door he permitted himself the luxury of a wanton yawn, succeeded by a scowl of dissatisfaction. He did intend to prune grape vines in the morning, but when he did that kind of work he liked to enjoy it, to taste it, and he knew his mind too well to suppose that under the present circumstances it would be content to devote itself to the questions of spurs and fruiting canes. Even now, when he was sleepy or should be, only by a sustained effort of the will could he prevent it from diving into the fascinating problem of the cerebral processes of Hebe Heath.…
He got his hands washed with soap, and his face doused, and looked for a towel. There was none on the rack, nor on the hook on the door. At the left was a smaller door, and he opened it, disclosing shelves with towels aplenty as well as a miscellany of other objects. He took a turkish, preferring them always to smooth ones, got his face dried, and, as he wiped his hands, ran his eyes over the array of articles on the shelves. But in spite of that display of idle curiosity, and of his trained capacity of observation, he would not have seen it but for his remarkably sharp vision, for the closet was dim. As it was, he did see it, the upper side of it, behind a pile of washcloths, peered in at it, and finally reached in and brought it to the light.
Under the light he examined it with a gathering frown. The pure black glaze. The delicate decorations in white enamel at the bottom. The golden yellow dragons and flowers in the middle, interspersed with the feathery green twigs and leaves. The odd, even unique, shape—Pomfret had said “unique.”
There could be no doubt about it. It was Pomfret’s Wan Li black rectangular, a picture of which he had shown to Fox, and which Mrs. Pomfret was convinced had been stolen by Hebe Heath.
Chapter 10
Fox put the vase back in the closet, shut the door, turned to the basin, and began to wash his hands again. A little consideration was required to decide how to handle it. He was, of course, under no compulsion to handle it at all; however the thing had got to Diego’s closet, it had nothing to do with pruning grape vines. But it was ridiculous to expect any animal with a monkey for an ancestor not to meddle with a thing like that. Fox used the towel on his hands, got the vase from the closet, opened the door and stepped into the living room, and called:
“Hey, Diego, where did you get this?”
“What?” Diego stuck his head out of the kitchenette the other side of the room. “Where did I get what? Oh—”
He saw it. His face stiffened. He was motionless a moment, then started across.
“It’s a peach,” Fox said enthusiastically. “Where did you get it?”
“That thing?” Diego growled. “Why—I don’t know. Somebody gave it to me.” He started to put out a hand for it, then let the hand drop. “Why, is it any good?”
“It certainly is. I’m not an expert, but I think it’s a sixteenth-century Ming. What’ll you take for it?”
“Oh, I—How did you happen to see it? Looking for an aspirin?”
“No, a towel. There wasn’t any on the rack. Really, I’d like to buy it.”
“Sure you would.” Diego laughed, not too successfully. “I never saw anything yet you wouldn’t like to buy. But I—uh—that is, I’d hate to stick you. I doubt if it’s worth much of anything—don’t see how it can be. How did you happen to see it—it’s dark in there.…”
“I’m cat-eyed. Caught a glimpse of the green and gold enamel.” Fox put the vase down on a table. “Let me know if you decide to sell it. I smell coffee, don’t I?”
When, half an hour later, Fox departed, no further reference had been made to the vase. It was of course natural, in view of the events of the day, that the comradely consumption of sandwiches and coffee should not have assumed the character of a festivity, but Diego had been so sour and glum that it might reasonably have been asked why he had requested the company of his friend at all.
So Fox, driving home through a ghostly and swirling night mist that kept him down to forty miles an hour, had still another puzzlement to harass him. It was as good as certain that Diego knew that the vase in his bathroom closet was the stolen property of Henry Pomfret, had been the most highly prized treasure of the Pomfret collection. It was next to certain that Diego had not stolen it, or if he had, that it had been for a more complicated and romantic motive than the acquisition of an article of value. No, it was impossible to fit Diego, as known, into the frame of so commonplace a vulgarity.…
For a solid week that enigma, and others more or less persistent, kept dodging nimbly around in Fox’s brain, trying to keep out of his way. For seven days he pruned vines and trees, started hot-beds and cold frames, removed top layers of winter mulch, repaired fences, helped a cow have a calf, and performed a hundred chores which ordinarily he left to Sam Trimble and those of the Zoo’s guests who felt like making a token payment for their board and room. It was his annual
salute to the approaching spring. There was one interruption, on Tuesday, when a phone call from New York requested his presence at the district attorney’s office, which resulted in no enlightenment on either side; and of evenings he read the newspapers. But in spite of the dozens of columns throughout the week on the subject of the Dunham murder and its link to the spectacular suicide of Jan Tusar, all of the enigmas remained intact. Still they made it readable and even exciting. The press had somehow got onto the varnish in the violin, whether or not by official communiqué was not made clear, and of course that was honey. The Gazette even printed a picture of the violin itself, so stated, with a daggerlike arrow pointing to the f-hole through which the varnish had been poured, which was an extraordinary journalistic achievement, considering that the violin was still in the vault at the Day and Night Bank where Fox had put it.
Wednesday a sideshow got the black headlines—a divagation conceived, planned and executed by Hebe Heath. It had all the earmarks, Fox remarked as he read it, of her peculiar genius: simplicity, lightning abruptness, and spotless imbecility. She had taken an airplane for Mexico City, and, what was more, had got there; and, besought telegraphically, refused to return. Thursday she was still there, but Mr. Theodore Gill had gone after her. Friday they were both in Mexico City and not, apparently, preparing to travel. Saturday the Gazette gave the police the devil for letting Gill slip out of their clutches by a subterfuge; but in the Sunday morning papers he had brought her back.
She granted interviews. She had left New York to escape publicity. (That, Fox decided, was her masterpiece.) She had had two good reasons for choosing Mexico City: First, she had never been there before, and second, the first long-distance plane to leave New York after her decision to go was scheduled for there. She hadn’t the faintest desire to flee from an obligation to co-operate in the processes of the law; to do that, she declared, would be horribly revolting.… Fox clipped the interview from the Times and put it in his scrapbook.
Monday morning he got a telephone call from Mrs. Pomfret. There was a drag to her voice that he had not heard before; indeed, he would scarcely have recognized it. She asked him to come to see her as soon as possible. He said he would be there at two that afternoon.
He arrived punctually on the hour, and from a corner of the reception hall was taken in a private elevator to the second floor of the duplex apartment and along a corridor to a chamber more feminine in its scents and silks than anything he would have expected of her—a sitting room or dressing room; the latter, he thought. The curtains were drawn, but even in the half light he could see that her face was as changed as her voice; the merry shrewd eyes were glassy slits between red-rimmed lids, and the skin that Rubens would have admired was leaden and lusterless. That Fox saw as he crossed to where she sat and took the hand she offered.
“I’m played out,” she said—an explanation, not a bid for sympathy. “I get dizzy if I stand up. Take that chair, it’s the most comfortable. You’ve just had a shave.”
Fox smiled at her. “You should have seen me this morning.”
“I’m glad I didn’t. I want you to find out who murdered my son.”
Fox screwed up his lips. “Well, Mrs. Pomfret—”
“Somebody has to. It has been a week. It has been eight days. I don’t want you to think I’m a vindictive old woman.”
“I shouldn’t suppose, right now, it matters much to you what I think.”
“Well, you’re wrong. It does.” She took a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. “I’m not crying, it’s just that my eyes are sore. I’ve always disapproved of vindictive people, and I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I’m one myself. But you ought to be able to realize how it is. Right here in my house, right in front of my eyes, my son died. Murdered by one of those people. Is it reasonable to expect me to drag along like this indefinitely, maybe forever, not knowing who did it? Some of them were my friends! I asked my lawyer to investigate you.”
“That’s all right. I’ve been investigated before.”
“I suppose you have. He reported that you are flashy but dependable and sound. I didn’t want a slick shyster. He also found an old rumor about your killing two men on account of something about a young woman.”
Fox froze. For a second he sat rigid and immobile, then he stood up. “If what you want is rumors,” he said icily, and was going. An exclamation to his back did not stop him; but before he reached the door fingers with a grip of surprising strength closed on his arm, and he halted. She was exigent but not apologetic:
“This is absurd! Did I know you were touchy about it? I merely blurted it out! I do blurt things—”
“It’s a bad habit, Mrs. Pomfret. Please let go of my arm.”
She relinquished her grip, let her hand fall, retreated a step, and looked up at him, unflinching at the cold penetration of his eyes. “Don’t go,” she said. “I beg your pardon. I suppose it is a bad habit. I need you. I form my own judgments of people. I told my lawyer I intended to engage you, and it was he who wanted to investigate you. I didn’t need to. When Diego told me of your contribution to the fund for Jan’s violin, naturally I thought you were doing it to gain an entrée to my circle, but when you declined my invitation to the presentation party, obviously that wasn’t it. But you’re not going to decline this. I won’t let you. I don’t care whether you think I’m a vindictive old woman or not. The police have accomplished nothing. Either they have no wits or they’re outwitted.”
She swayed a little, steadied herself. “I can’t stand up for two minutes. I can’t sleep and I won’t take things. This has hit me—hit me cruelly—Give me your arm, please?”
Fox moved to her side and let her have his elbow for a support back to her chair. It was credible that she was in fact shattered—must have been, indeed, since she had twice applied the phrase “old woman” to herself, which would have been unthinkable ten days ago. Besides, it was always the case that if and when super-egotists finally get it, they get it good and hard.
“Sit down,” she said. “If you wish, I’ll beg your pardon again. I can’t undertake to change my habits, not even now. Wait, before you sit down, get that check there under that vase on the table. As a retainer. If it isn’t enough, say so.”
“There’s no hurry about that.” Fox sat. “Are you sure you want to hire me for this job, Mrs. Pomfret?”
“Certainly I am. I don’t do things unless I’m sure I want to. Why shouldn’t I be?”
“Because, as you said, some of those people are your friends. You said ‘were.’ If I take the job I’ll either finish it or break a leg. What if, for instance, Dora Mowbray did it?”
“Dora? She didn’t.”
“She could have. Or your husband, or Diego. I ask you to consider that seriously. This isn’t a matter of a stolen vase or varnish in a violin; it’s premeditated murder. If I, hired by you, get proof of guilt, it won’t be reported privately and exclusively to you. One of those people will be tried and convicted and will die. That’s all right with me. Is it all right with you?”
“Die,” she said harshly. She repeated it, “Die.…”
Fox nodded. “That’s the penalty.”
“My son died. In agony. I saw it. Didn’t he?”
“He did.”
“Then—yes.”
“Very well. Please tell me what your son said to you Sunday afternoon. When I wanted to ask him about the violin and you insisted on speaking with him first.”
Mrs. Pomfret blinked her red-rimmed eyes. “You were there when the inspector asked me that and I told him. He said nothing.”
“I know. You said he laughed at you, reassured you, swore that in taking the violin from the parcel he had only been pulling my leg. But you’re not talking to the police now, you’re talking to your hired man, and believe me, your son’s going for that violin was not for fun and games. There was nothing funny about it. I’d like to know exactly what he said when you asked him about it.”
An hour later Fox was still
there and Mrs. Pomfret was still on her chair, her shoulders sagging, answering his questions. Another hour later she was reclining on a chaise lounge with her eyes closed and Fox was seated beside her, still asking. It was going on five o’clock when he finally left. He took with him a great many things he had not had on his arrival, among them the following:
IN HIS POCKET, OBJECTS
A check for $5,000.
A key to Perry Dunham’s bachelor apartment on 51st Street.
A note with the salutation, “To Whom It May Concern,” signed by Mrs. Pomfret.
IN HIS MEMORY, STATEMENTS BY
MRS. POMFRET
She suspected that Perry had been carrying on an affair with Garda Tusar, from remarks Jan had made; but her recollection of the remarks was vague.
Garda had broken an engagement to marry Diego Zorilla when the accidental loss of his fingers had ruined his career, and Diego was still hopelessly infatuated with her.
The Wan Li vase had been stolen at the party given by her for presentation of the violin to Jan.
Hebe Heath should be in jail.
If Hebe had not stolen the vase, Adolph Koch had, for his own collection, which was “much inferior to my husband’s.”
Koch was a goat and a libertine.
IN HIS MIND, CONCLUSIONS DRAWN
Mrs. Pomfret had had genuine affection for Perry and grieved for him, but it was the outrage to her ego—her son foully and impudently murdered before her eyes—that was intolerable and must be avenged.
Mrs. Pomfret’s implacable hostility toward Hebe was the conventional wifely reaction of a woman as old as (older than?) her husband.
Mrs. Pomfret had wanted Perry to marry Dora Mowbray.
Most of which, Fox reflected as, reaching the sidewalk, he sought a drugstore for a phone booth, was not without interest as subsidiary material for a student of mankind, but it appeared to have little or no bearing on the questions of who poisoned Perry Dunham or drove Jan Tusar to suicide. Worse, the only line of inquiry it suggested was the one most distasteful to him personally; but he had taken the job.
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